<p>CIA Director James Woolsey was fighting other bureaucratic battles &#8212; instead of [Osama] bin Laden. The CIA was critically short of translators who spoke or read Arabic, Farsi, Pashto and the other languages of the great "terrorist belt." That belt begins on the dirty beaches of Somalia, arcs up the river valleys of Sudan and Egypt, across the desert flats of Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf states, over the dry plateaus of Syria and Iraq, past the wastes of Iran, through the mountains of Afghanistan and Pakistan, and ends in the cold steppes of Central Asia. In the world's most terror-prone region, the CIA was essentially blind, deaf, and dumb.</p>

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (AP) -- The first company to obtain a permit for fracking in Illinois announced Friday it won't use it, citing market conditions and the state's "burdensome and costly" regulations. "The process we have gone through to receive a permit was burdensome, time consuming and costly due to the current rules and regulations of the state of Illinois, and it appears that this process would continue for future permit applications," Woolsey vice president Mark Sooter said in a statement. The Illinois Legislature in 2013 passed a law regulating fracking. At the time, the law was considered one of the...

Former CIA Chief Warns of N. KoreaÂ’s Other Nuclear Weapon September 16, 2017 9:19 PM Jenny Leeâ€‹ /snip A: Probably not fully yet. But it doesnÂ’t matter because they donÂ’t need an intercontinental ballistic missile in order to attack directly the United States. They can do so with a satellite launch and [they] have nuclear weapons contained in the satellite that continues to circle the Earth a couple of times a day. ... So it does not take an intercontinental ballistic missile to reach the United States. You can do it fine with a weapon on a satellite. Q: You...

Retired CIA Director James Woolsey said Friday that North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un "may have more up his sleeve" than firing a nuclear missile at the United States. "It is a little worse than that," Woolsey, 75, a former Navy undersecretary, told Don Lemon on CNN. "They can launch a satellite into orbit. "That's actually easier to do than to hit a target on the other side of the Earth. "If that satellite contains a small nuclear weapon — and it is detonated over some place, say the United States, it can be devastating to the electric grid. "So, we've...

Donald Trump's strategic approach to confronting Russia under President Vladimir Putin is more complex and nuanced than the Republican nominee's campaign trail rhetoric often indicates, his new senior adviser, former CIA Director James Woolsey, said Tuesday. "I think what Mr. Trump does is much more important than what he says," Woolsey said. "You don't succeed at something like this based just on language. Language is a tool. I don't think it is an absolute."

Do voters grasp the significance of Hillary Clinton’s e-mail scandal and her mishandling of classified information? One certainly does — and he knows the Clintons all too well. James Woolsey served as CIA director under Bill Clinton during his first term, and he knows enough to tell the rest of us that Hillary Clinton can’t be trusted with the nation’s security. In fact, he’s joining Team Trump as an adviser for that reason: “She demonstrated a complete lack of understanding and an inability to lead the agency she headed in such a way as to maintain its mission and security,”...

Bill Clinton’s former CIA chief James Woolsey will act as an adviser to Donald Trump’s campaign. Woolsey, who served as director of the CIA from 1993 to 1995 and describes himself as a life-long Democrat, praised Trump’s commitment to ending defense budget cuts from sequestration. He said he can’t support Hillary Clinton because of the controversy surrounding her use of a private email server as secretary of State. “She demonstrated a complete lack of understanding and an inability to lead the agency she headed in such a way as to maintain its mission and security,’ Woolsey said in a statement....

Former Bill Clinton Director of Central Intelligence Crosses Party Lines to Advise the Republican Nominee New York, NY - Today, the Trump Campaign is proud to announce Amb. R. James Woolsey as a Senior Advisor. Amb. R. James Woolsey stated, “I have been a ‘Scoop Jackson,’ ‘Joe Lieberman,’ Democrat all of my adult life, but I am pleased to be asked to participate with others I respect in advising GOP candidate Donald J. Trump on the urgent need to reinvest in and modernize our military in order to confront the challenges of the 21st century. Mr. Trump’s commitment to reversing...

"Former CIA Director James Woolsey: Yet again the president did not pass up an opportunity to say that guns are the problem. And yet again he passed up the opportunity even to allude to the fact that there might be some motivation from some branch of Islam, or jihadist terrorism or jihadi thinking behind what was taking place despite of the fact that the killer was shouting ‘Allahu Akbar.’ The facts don’t seem to matter to this administration."

Teaming up with the Department of Agriculture (which has a cheery Rotary Club ring to it), the Navy has purchased 450,000 gallons of biofuel for about $16 a gallon, or about 4 times the price of its standard marine fuel, JP-5, which has been going for under $4 a gallon. You won’t be surprised to learn that a member of Obama’s presidential transition team, T. J. Glauthier, is a “strategic advisor” at Solazyme, the California company that is selling a portion of the biofuel to the Navy. Glauthier worked – shock, shock – on the energy-sector portion of the 2009...

A former CIA director says leaker Edward Snowden should be convicted of treason and given the death penalty in the wake of the terrorist attack on Paris. "It's still a capital crime, and I would give him the death sentence, and I would prefer to see him hanged by the neck until he's dead, rather than merely electrocuted," James Woolsey told CNN's Brooke Baldwin on Thursday. Woolsey said Snowden, who divulged classified in 2013, is partly responsible for the terrorist attack in France last week that left at least 120 dead and hundreds injured. "I think the blood of a...

Former CIA Director James Woolsey says a report that Iran will be allowed to use its own inspectors to investigate a site where it may develop nuclear arms is so mind-boggling, it's almost like watching "Saturday Night Live." "I thought it was a 'Saturday Night Live' skit. I mean not seriously but I couldn't believe it that they would let the Iranians inspect themselves," Woolsey said Thursday on Newsmax TV to J.D. Hayworth, host of "Newsmax Prime." "What do they have to do? Take a trip to the photo shop on the way to the data exchange so they can...

INTELLIGENCE agents from Prague to Swansea are uncovering a trail of clues that point to President Saddam Hussein of Iraq having a hand in al-Qaeda’s terrorist missions. Iraqi ministers have spent the week protesting Baghdad’s innocence to the United Nations, but will not say why some of its diplomats who met Mohammed Atta, one of the suspected September 11 hijackers, disappeared from their European posts after that date. Nor will Baghdad explain why Saddam’s agents were spotted at various times this year with Atta in Germany, Spain, Italy and the Czech Republic. Many in the Pentagon are sure Saddam ...

A heavyweight lineup of former national security officials banded together late Tuesday to accuse Americans for Tax Reform (ATR) president Grover Norquist and high-ranking GOP political operative Suhail Khan of connections to the Muslim Brotherhood. The officials authored a 45-page dossier on the issue to Cleta Mitchell, the top lawyer for the American Conservatives’ Union who in 2011 cleared Norquist of the allegations initially brought by former high-ranking Reagan official Frank Gaffney. The signatories include numerous powerful and respected former officials, including former Attorney General Michael Mukasey, former CIA Director James Woolsey, former Florida Rep. Allen West, retired Army Lt....

Former CIA Director James Woolsey had harsh words Tuesday for anyone thinking about giving Edward Snowden amnesty, and argued the NSA leaker should be “hanged” if he’s ever tried and convicted of treason. Woolsey, along with former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Hugh Shelton, spoke Tuesday in Washington in an interview with Fox News. “I think giving him amnesty is idiotic,” Woolsey said. “He should be prosecuted for treason. If convicted by a jury of his peers, he should be hanged by his neck until he is dead."

April 12, 2013 Former Rep. Woolsey to join panel debating cover-up of alien life on Earth Guy Kovner Retired Congresswoman Lynn Woolsey of Petaluma will help preside over a five-day media event aimed at revealing evidence of an “extraterrestrial presence” and a decades-long government effort to cover it up. Woolsey, who retired last year after representing Sonoma and Marin counties for 20 years on Capitol Hill, is among six former federal lawmakers tapped as panelists for the Citizen Hearing on Disclosure, starting April 29 at the National Press Club in Washington. The $600,000 event, put on by the Bethesda, Md.-based...

Rosa Brooks serves as Counselor to the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, Michele Flournoy. In May 2010 she also became Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense and then Special Coordinator for Rule of Law and Humanitarian Policy. She is running a new Pentagon office dedicated to those issues. She is on leave from her job as a law professor at the Georgetown University Law Center. Brooks is known as a columnist (most recently with the LA Times) and at the Pentagon her portfolio has included both human rights issues and global engagement and strategic communication. Her mother, Barbara Ehrenreich, is...